Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] CHECKSIGFROMSTACK/{Verify} BIP for Bitcoin

From: Jeremy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 Jul 2021 11:39:44 -0700

>
> Do you have concerns about sophisticated covenants, and if so, would you
> mind describing them?

Personally, not in particular worried about arbitrary covenants as I think
that: 1 validation costs can be kept in check; 2 you're free to burn your
coins it you want to.

I *do* care that when we enable covenants we don't make people jump through
too many hoops, but I also respect Russel's points that we can enable
functionality and then later figure out how to make it more efficient or
useful guided by use cases.

However, I think the broader community is unconvinced by the cost benefit
of arbitrary covenants. See
https://medium.com/block-digest-mempool/my-worries-about-too-generalized-covenants-5eff33affbb6
as a recent example. Therefore as a critical part of building consensus on
various techniques I've worked to emphasize that specific additions do not
entail risk of accidentally introducing more than was bargained for to
respect the concerns of others.

>
> I'm a fan of CSFS, even mentioning it on zndtoshi's recent survey[2],
> but it seems artificially limited without OP_CAT.  (I also stand by my
> answer on that survey of believing there's a deep lack of developer
> interest in CSFS at the moment.  But, if you'd like to tilt at that
> windmill, I won't stop you.)

Well if you're a fan of it, I'm a fan of it, Russel's a fan of it, and
Sanket's a fan of it that sounds like a good amount of dev interest :) I
know Olaoluwa is also a fan of it too and has some cool L2 protocols using
it.

I think it might not be *hype* because it's been around a while and has
always been bundled with cat so been a non starter for the reasons above. I
think as an independent non-bundle it's exciting and acceptable to a number
of devs. I also believe upgrades can be developed and tracked in parallel
so I'm taking on the windmill tilting personally to spearhead that -- on
the shoulders of Giants who have been creating specs for this already of
course.

Best,

Jeremy

P.s. icymi https://rubin.io/blog/2021/07/02/covenants/ covers my current
thinking about how to proceed w.r.t. deploying and developing covenant
systems for bitcoin